Do You Feel The Love?
“What are you guys doing for Valentine’s Day?” Someone asked me this question last week and I thought she may be talking to someone else. Who is “you guys?” Did she mean me and my husband? Do people who are married and have 10,000 kids “do things” on Valentine’s Day? I’m super confused.
I mean we acknowledge the day. I think it’s awesome to spend a day focused on the love you have for the people in your life. Kiddos usually receive treats, there will be some cards exchanged (maybe). It was my intention to buy my husband a Valentine’s card yesterday at Target, but the crowd in front of the “For My Husband” section was akin to something you’d see for the release of a new iPhone, so I opted out.
Valentine’s Day, for moms, focuses largely on the children. It’s not that you don’t acknowledge your significant other with a card or a gift, but like most things in your life—it’s not about you anymore. Now it’s about finding class Valentine’s that your 11-year-old son will actually distribute with the least amount of eye rolling. Trying to convince your daughter that the pre-made cards are just as special as the ones she insisted on crafting by hand last year (we are a year older and wiser). It’s all about them.
If you have small children, like six and under, I am sorry for you. Valentine’s Day is an unforeseen nightmare. You don’t expect it, you underestimate it every year until it rolls around bringing its giant class list with it. Forcing small people to address what feels like 700 cards is the work of saints. It requires more patience than math homework and dioramas. If you’re really good, you try to spread it out over a few nights, but who has the foresight for that? Again, this is the sneaker– you forget what torture it is until it’s too late!
If you have male children, you can take your Valentine frustration and multiply it by at least three. It’s not that my sons are not interested in giving and receiving the Valentines. It’s not that they aren’t creative or artistic. But something about the list and the process causes their brains to fully melt down. Twenty names? Even at a rate of one name a minute this little procedure should take less than a half hour, right? Nope. This will drag on for hours. There will be breaks and frustration and you will end up yelling about being kind and showing love, which makes no sense at all.
Girls are much easier to manage through the process, but they bring the process to a whole new level. We can’t just write names on the cards, we have to write them in glitter which requires glue and drying time. We can’t assign any card to any person, that’s crazy! We have to carefully select just the right card for each classmate (even though there are only three variations in the store-bought package). Please note my warning from above, if you have a daughter that tells you she’d like to make all of her Valentines by hand, allow yourself no less than three weeks for this process or, take my advice and just DON’T.
Maybe this isn’t your experience? Maybe your kids love to craft and address Valentine’s? They knock it out in twenty minutes and you hardly even know it happened. God bless, but I wouldn’t tell anyone that. It’s like telling people you were only in child labor for fifteen minutes—people are happy for you, but it also makes them angry. So, what am I doing for Valentine’s Day? I am celebrating that we lived through another year of class Valentines. I will sit back with my people and enjoy them and think about how lucky we are to be surrounded by so much love. And, I will know deep in my heart that next year, two out of three children will be in middle school where class Valentine’s cease to exist. Spread the love!